What Help is Available?

Parents of struggling learners or children who have special needs are often made to feel that they need to have their children taught by a professional in order for them to reach their potential. This opinion is often presented by very loving people. The parents can’t help but ask themselves, “Am I doing a disservice to my child by teaching him or her at home? Would he be making more progress if he were in a school setting, with the professionals?”

Homeschooling a special needs child is an individual decision, of course, but if you decide to homeschool such a child, we are here to help you be the best special education teacher you can be. Our finding is, that with the literature, teaching aids, and other resources now available, that any parent who desires to help their child learn can find that help, and eventually do a much better job with that child than any school could do.

At times there may be a need to enlist the help of some of these professionals in areas such as speech or physical therapy. However, the bulk of the teaching can be done by the parent, and is being done by parents across the nation very successfully!

Resources

Neurodevelopment Therapy

Computer Programs:

Brain Builder is a neurobic, computer-based training program designed to build memory and thinking skills.

Therapies:

Brain integration therapy, can be done at home with your child, and the other children at home also. It is very inexpensive, but is an independent program, totally parent-led.

The National Association for Child Development is one organization that employs this brain-based therapy, which can be done at home with the guidance of neurotherapists. It is quite expensive, but parents who do it report good results.

Little Giant Steps is a private, neurodevelopmental-educational consulting group. This organization provides academic testing coupled with neuro-developmental evaluations, as well as individualized programs for students with learning disabilities, processing difficulties, and cognitive impairments.

Virginia Largent offers online evaluations, private consultations, and Connections: The Brain Development Seminar which teaches how to reorganize the brain. Scientifically based with references cited, the seminar is interactive, educational and fun. Connections teaches about the brain and shows the specific exercises and movements that will stimulate precise neurological pathways in the brain where the disconnects exist. It can complete the reorganization process and also integrate primitive reflexes. Participants are fully equipped to transform their students and child with Connections.

The primary mission at Equipping Minds is to work with children and adults to help them overcome learning, emotional, and social challenges. They work individually with children and adults of all ages and abilities to reach their full potential through onsite and online programs. Carol Brown and her team create individualized brain fitness plans for their clients, and have seen working memory, processing speed, attention, comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills increase.

The team at The Family Hope Center will evaluate your child’s development, pinpoint the location of the dysfunction in the brain, and design and develop a highly-individualized, tailored treatment plan—physical, physiological, emotional, social, and nutritional—that specifically targets the injured area. Then, they follow up with support, supervision and ongoing counseling.

Specific Educational Therapy

Clinic-Based Programs:

Lindamood intensive phonics program is designed by speech/language specialists. This sequential system of teaching phonemes can be very effective for children struggling to learn to read. It is usually provided by local clinics, and is expensive.

LearningRx is a center or clinic-based program that is one-on-one. It is truly an educational cognitive therapy program. LearningRx treats the causes of learning difficulties rather than the symptoms. Tutoring focuses on reteaching content while LearningRx focuses on why someone didn’t learn the content in the first place. LearningRx strengthens all major cognitive learning skills first before providing research-based reading or math programs. LearningRx develops all of the cognitive skill areas while tutoring solely focuses on stored information, also known as your knowledge bank. Every activity you perform uses different cognitive learning skills to process information. For example, good reading comprehension requires strong attention skills, processing speed, working memory, logic and reasoning, and visual and auditory processing. These skills are just as vital as the knowledge of reading phonetics.

Brainworks (formerly SOI) is a clinic-based program aimed at helping a child with balance issues, visual issues, etc., through exercises. It is usually provided by local clinics and is fairly expensive.

Interactive Metronome is a clinic-based program that helps a child or adult gain better rhythm, timing, etc., to aid in reading and many life activities. It is fairly expensive. Home programs are less expensive.

Sylvan Learning, a tutoring clinic, is designed to help a child gain reading or math skills using regular curriculum and techniques. The centers help children who just need more exposure to systematic teaching in various subject areas. It does not correct processing skills (visual, auditory, visual/motor). It is expensive. Sylvan now offers online tutoring for home use.

Huntington Learning Centers have been helping children achieve their education goals for more than 30 years. There are currently more than 350 centers in 42 states. Programs are completely individualized and in many cases tutoring is actually one on one.

Home-Based Programs:

Brain integration therapy for children is a home program that can be used with all the children in a family, to make processing skills (visual, auditory, visual/motor…writing) easier. It is inexpensive.

One Hand Typing is a program for children who are physically impacted in their fine motor skills, such as children who have cerebral palsey, or any other condition that could use this very specialized typing program.

The Parent’s Guide to Attention Deficit Disorders by McCamey and Bauer (ISBN 1878372017)

Help For Your Hyperactive Child, by William Crook, MD (ISBN 0933478186)

Smart But Feeling Dumb by Harold Levinson, MD (ISBN 0446691178)

Teaching the Tiger:A Handbook for Individuals Involved in the Education of Students with Attention Deficit Disorders, Tourette Syndrome or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder by Marilyn Dornbush, Ph.D. and Sheryl Pruitt, M.Ed.(ISBN 1878267345)

www.wellconnectedbrain.com Virginia Largent offers online evaluations, private consultations, and Connections: The Brain Development Seminar which teaches how to reorganize the brain.

www.wellconnectedbrain.com Virginia Largentoffers online evaluations, private consultations, and Connections: The Brain Development Seminar which teaches how to reorganize the brain. Scientifically based with references cited, the seminar is interactive, educational and fun. Connections teaches about the brain and shows the specific exercises and movements that will stimulate precise neurological pathways in the brain where the disconnects exist. It can complete the reorganization process and also integrate primitive reflexes. Participants are fully equipped to transform their students and child with Connections.

www.equippingminds.com The primary mission at Equipping Minds is to work with children and adults to help them overcome learning, emotional, and social challenges. They work individually with children and adults of all ages and abilities to reach their full potential through onsite and online programs. Carol Brown and her team create individualized brain fitness plans for their clients, and have seen working memory, processing speed, attention, comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills increase.

www.familyhopecenter.com The team at The Family Hope Center will evaluate your child’s development, pinpoint the location of the dysfunction in the brain, and design and develop a highly-individualized, tailored treatment plan—physical, physiological, emotional, social, and nutritional—that specifically targets the injured area. Then, they follow up with support, supervision and ongoing counseling.

National Autism Resources Inc., is a global leader in providing cost-effective, research-based therapeutic tools that meet the needs of people on the autism spectrum across their lifespan since 2006. They carry tools and adaptive technologies that work together to improve skills and significantly decrease impairment. They provide family members of the autism community, schools, and insurance companies proven tools that improve the independence and quality of life for people on the autism spectrum. They have been certified and licensed by the State of California as a Durable Medical Equipment provider. This company also has a wonderful blog that is full of resources and information for parents, practitioners, and teachers.

Newsletters

Online Resources:

Autismtoday.com offers many services and has an online directory offering easy-to-locate physicians, psychologists, speech, occupational and behavioral therapists, schools, camps, programs, recreation and much more in one convenient place.

skillsforautism.com/
Skills® is the most comprehensive online solution for treating children with autism using Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA). The system includes:

Curriculum

Assessment

Behavior Intervention Plan (BIP) for treating challenging behavior

Reports and Analytics

Progress Tracking

Skills® identifies every skill an individual with autism needs across every area of human functioning from infancy up through adolescence while still allowing users the flexibility to customize lesson activities. This program may be utilized by parents, as well as teachers, and professionals serving the autism community.

Social Skill Builder: written by two speech and language specialists, this computer-based resource provides explicit and systematic guidance and instruction in social skills.

Parents will receive a free kit via email. Once the kit is received: print it, read it, and start helping your family on the road to academic success! Once parents know their child's level of ability, they can easily help them gain the ability to follow directions, comprehend oral information, and improve many other globally affected areas.

Earobics computer based program to improve auditory memory and sound discrimination

Virginia Largent offers online evaluations, private consultations, and Connections: The Brain Development Seminar which teaches how to reorganize the brain. Scientifically based with references cited, the seminar is interactive, educational and fun. Connections teaches about the brain and shows the specific exercises and movements that will stimulate precise neurological pathways in the brain where the disconnects exist. It can complete the reorganization process and also integrate primitive reflexes. Participants are fully equipped to transform their students and child with Connections.

The primary mission at Equipping Minds is to work with children and adults to help them overcome learning, emotional, and social challenges. They work individually with children and adults of all ages and abilities to reach their full potential through onsite and online programs. Carol Brown and her team create individualized brain fitness plans for their clients, and have seen working memory, processing speed, attention, comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills increase.

The team at The Family Hope Center will evaluate your child’s development, pinpoint the location of the dysfunction in the brain, and design and develop a highly-individualized, tailored treatment plan—physical, physiological, emotional, social, and nutritional—that specifically targets the injured area. Then, they follow up with support, supervision and ongoing counseling.

A Struggling Right Brain Learner

Books:

Right Brain Children in a Left Brain World, by Jeffrey Freed (ISBN 0684847930)

Videos:

Understanding and Helping the Struggling Learner video by Dianne Craft, available at www.diannecraft.org

Software:

Organizations:

Virginia Largent offers online evaluations, private consultations, and Connections: The Brain Development Seminar which teaches how to reorganize the brain. Scientifically based with references cited, the seminar is interactive, educational and fun. Connections teaches about the brain and shows the specific exercises and movements that will stimulate precise neurological pathways in the brain where the disconnects exist. It can complete the reorganization process and also integrate primitive reflexes. Participants are fully equipped to transform their students and child with Connections.

The primary mission at Equipping Minds is to work with children and adults to help them overcome learning, emotional, and social challenges. They work individually with children and adults of all ages and abilities to reach their full potential through onsite and online programs. Carol Brown and her team create individualized brain fitness plans for their clients, and have seen working memory, processing speed, attention, comprehension, critical thinking, and communication skills increase.

The team at The Family Hope Center will evaluate your child’s development, pinpoint the location of the dysfunction in the brain, and design and develop a highly-individualized, tailored treatment plan—physical, physiological, emotional, social, and nutritional—that specifically targets the injured area. Then, they follow up with support, supervision and ongoing counseling.

Handwriting Without Tears Manual by Jan Olsen, available at www.hwtears.com

Understanding and Helping the Struggling Learner video by Dianne Craft

Online Resources

Lexercise provides online therapy for struggling readers, writers, and spellers—including children with dysgraphia. This online dyslexia test can be helpful in determining if there is a dyslexia component along with the dysgraphia.

Recordings

Gifted High School Students

HSLDA High School Consultants provide a resource list, of providers of courses that have been developed to stretch the minds and abilities of high school students.

Both Udacity and Coursera have innovative classes for students.

Open Courseware Consortium offers college courses for free where a student can download the lectures, syllabi, etc. and complete the course. (Such courses could not be awarded college credit, but certainly could be awarded high school credit.)

Video-Based Programs:

Websites

Communicating Partners—Dr. James McDonald’s website: The Communicating Partners Center is guided by one major belief: that parents are in the best position to make sure their child develops social and communicative skills to their potential.

Love and Learning—their techniques and materials (DVDs, audio tapes, books and computer programs) help infants and toddlers with language and reading development; also appropriate for older, non-verbal children.

Watch My Words offers multi-modal speech/language resources such as CDs, DVDs, charts, and flash cards to support functional language and speech/sound development in young children.